<?php
/**
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 * Copyright © 2019 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Faking art skills',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/01/07.jpg" alt="A bridge near my workplace" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I got proctor appointment set up finally.
		I meant to do it sooner, but hadn&apos;t gotten around to it.
		I still got my appointment on my preferred date though: this coming Thursday.
	</p>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			It makes sense that as sounds are spoken more, they become more-easily spoken.
			Much of this is due to practice.
			You may notice that when trying to speak a foreign language, certain sounds of that language are difficult to pronounce, but easy for native speakers.
			For example, I have difficulty rolling my &quot;r&quot;s, but that&apos;s a common feature in Spanish.
			You can also see that young children who haven&apos;t had decades of practice speaking yet have difficulty with some sounds.
		</p>
		<p>
			Another part of common words and sounds becoming easy to speak is that they develop common mispronunciations, and people interpret those mispronunciations as correct.
			In this case, it&apos;s not that the correct pronunciation becomes easier, but that an easier mispronunciation comes into common language.
			For example, &quot;espresso&quot; doesn&apos;t have an &quot;x&quot; anywhere in it, and people who pronounce it as &quot;express-oh&quot; aren&apos;t pronouncing it correctly.
			I&apos;m fairly certain &quot;wendsday&quot; isn&apos;t the correct pronunciation of &quot;Wednesday&quot; either; the &quot;d&quot; and the &quot;n&quot; get transposed the way people tend to say it, and the word ends up a syllable shorter.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve gotten about two thirds of the reading material for the week finished.
		I should be able to finish tomorrow, if I can stay on task.
		Otherwise, I still have the next day to get done.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="eyeglasses">
	<h2>Eyeglasses</h2>
	<p>
		As I said before, I can&apos;t easily compare my vision with and without the glasses, as taking off the glasses after my eyes have adjusted to them messes up my vision for a while.
		I think I&apos;ve got a clear picture of how they work now though.
		They let me see things at a very specific distance, which is further than I can normally focus, but at the cost of blurring anything that&apos;s nearer or further than that point quite considerably.
		The glasses definitely do more harm than good.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drawing">
	<h2>Drawing tests</h2>
	<p>
		I put into practice what I observed yesterday, and the results came out quite well.
		I still can&apos;t draw all that great, but by exploiting a few characteristics of my subject, I can make it look like I can draw very well.
		I wonder if this is what most people that seem to be able to draw do.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, my hand&apos;s not steady enough for straight lines, so I need something with curves.
		And between hand unsteadiness and sometimes getting confused (for example, drawing one of my curves backwards), I need something that&apos;s prone to permutation.
		Leaves and flowers seem to come out well for me.
		Between their normal variance and the fact that strange growths aren&apos;t that uncommon in plants, it&apos;s easy to disguise my errors as part of the intent of the image.
		Someday, I&apos;d like to learn how to actually draw well, but in the mean time, I can have a lot of fun with plant drawings and the like.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="sales">
	<h2>Sales contest</h2>
	<p>
		I guess the sales contest continues, as the head manager let me know today that I&apos;ve won for the third month in a row.
		I this point, I think I&apos;m just trying to keep my sales up so the boss&apos;ll see what they&apos;re losing when I leave soon.
		My moral there is at an all-time low though, and both the head manager and the franchise owner have made it very clear that they don&apos;t care about their employees, so I&apos;m definitely not doing this out of loyalty or something.
		Prize money is prize money though, so I&apos;ll find a good use for my winnings.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
